Life, Liberty, and me.

Greetings one and all. I’m going to start this blog differently than most of the other ones that I’ve started in recent memory: with a word of warning – I generally send this blog and its updates to friends of mine, but I cannot control whoever else may or may not choose to come read what I have to say. That being said, the things that I say in this blog are, for all intents and purposes, my life. I write about what I want to write about because it’s important to me at that time. If you don’t want to know personal updates, then don’t read. That being said…on with the show!

I have been looking forward to this weekend for a couple weeks…and so far, the wait was totally worth it. What all was going on? Well…I’ll tell you.

Friday night, I went to pick up ‘Smokey’ and we went to The Windbag (a local restaurant that used to be, amongst other things, a brothel). We sat, ate and chatted for about 20 minutes even though the real world clock said that several hours had flown by. It was a great chance to sit…and just talk. We ended up leaving there around 10 and went on a short walk around the Walking Mall (it’s kinda boring at night…ok, it’s REALLY boring at night). We stopped in at Rileys (the local Irish Pub) to listen to ‘Whitey’ – this 60+ year old guy who was doing his best to play some songs. He tried…that’s about the best thing I can say. I ended up getting home just before 12 (and when you wake up at 3:30 in the morning, 12 is REALLY late).

Last week, Mrs. Rook and I came up with a devious plan to pull a joke on Smokey: I was going to purchase the most gaudy, tacky and ugly corsage that I could find or have made and would give it to her on Saturday night. I woke up the other morning and thought to myself, “How much more fun would it be to do this, but to let Smokey know ahead of time so we could reverse the prank back on Mrs. Rook instead?” So, I asked Smokey if she was in and we started making our plan. I was going to give it to her and she was going to remark on how ugly it was and say something like, “This is the worst corsage I’ve ever seen.” My job was to pretend to be all hurt (Mrs. Rook said that she would probably pretend it was ok, so Smokey getting upset was a completely different response than expected) and then to tell Mrs. Rook that it was the worst joke ever and say, “I’m not going to do this…I’m going home.” And then we would all have a big laugh at Mrs. Rooks expense.

Saturday afternoon, after lunch with everyone, I picked up the most awful corsage ever made (it’s the picture for this blog, actually). The plan was now green lighted. I went home, and after a nap and a shower, got dressed for the evening. I went to Rook’s house and when Smokey came down stairs, she and Mrs. Rook asked at the same time (although in completely different rooms and out of sight of the other person) if I had brought the corsage. I just smiled and nodded at both of them. Unfortunately, while Smokey did her part really well, I totally dropped the ball. I had the feigned hurt look, I even said it was a horrible joke…but that’s where I tanked. My acting skills clearly died in 5th grade…the last time I was in a play. Anyway, Mrs. Rook still was kinda wondering what was going on and then it dawned on her that Smokey and I had planned the whole thing. Anyway, I thought it was funny even though I botched the whole thing.

We all left their house and went to the local Thai place for dinner. Neither Rook nor Mrs. Rook had ever had Thai…so it was going to be an experience for them. We all ate our fill and then went to listen to the Helena Symphony and choir do an opera entitled “Elixir of Love” (the premise of the story being similar to “Love Potion #9”). It was REALLY well done: the music was great, the singing was really good, and the story was cool…even if it was sung in Italian (which is surprisingly similar to Spanish). We all ended up going to The Silver Star afterwards to talk and talk and talk. I think at one point the two women were trying to come up with as many ways to embarrass me as possible (you are both evil, by the way). I finally got home around 2 and after reading for a bit, went to bed a VERY tired man.

I know the weekend isn’t over…we still plan on cooking dinner tonight and maybe watching a movie or something…but I wanted to get this all down so that the post wouldn’t be 10 pages long.